501 - Study Task 7

Where is your project now?
I have completed my first stage of the practical by animating my four chosen elements (Smoke, fire, water and lightning) without using any theory or looking at case studies.

What have you found out?
I have found out that animating effects is actually very challenging. I realised I had a lot of gaps in my knowledge of how exactly they work, and couldn’t get my head around creating smooth, appealing movements. In addition to this, I struggled with the actual drawings as I tend to be poor at drawing more curvy, flowy lines. This resulted in poor shape design in combination with unconving forms.

Where is it going?
The next stages are to learn and practice the theory and fundamentals of effects animation, so that I can then use that knowledge to animate the elements again but hopefully much better.


Formative Feedback:

This 1 to 1 was mainly checking my progress to make sure I was on track, so I asked for feedback on my project outline to make sure it was okay. The only thing I had to do was add the bibliography in - which I’ll do at the end. Ben also told me to put all my sources in the bibliography - not just the ones I’d used in the actual write-up.

Ben also told me that the actual writing could be informal if I wanted, and seeing as I’m going to be uploading this to a blog I think that style would suit it the best.


Peer Feedback:

Only Harriet turned up to my peer review session, so we just gave each other feedback.

She liked my idea of having 2 versions of the animations - one without the theory and one with - and said that it was a clear response to my question. Regarding the style section, she said that it would be a great way to show a range of appeals - which also correlates with my question - however I should be wary of how many I do, as keeping to a minimum amount of ideas will get better designs out as I can spend more time on them. Seeing as the style section is last, I think I will see how much time I have before choosing exactly what styles to have, but currently I think I want to include at least one of each of these: semi realistic, cartoony, lineless and more angular shaped.


Action Plan:

I intend to visually and practically investigate what makes 2D effects animation appealing. I will do this by animating a series of four elements with my current skill set. From there, I will learn the fundamentals of effects animation from professionals, such as Joseph Gilland, Tracy Strong, Naoki Arazia, Jason Keyser, Kathleen Quaife and more. I will then learn the physics and theory behind how each of my four chosen elements move, and study that theory in action by looking at live action. Next, I will study effects animations of each element from professionals, possibly looking at studio commissioned animations as well as successful films.

At this point I should have learnt and studied enough to be able to apply it to the second animation of each element, hopefully demonstrating a clear improvement. Finally, I will use the smoke animation to create several different styles, highlighting how the visual style of an effect changes how it is perceived.